A wide variety of techniques have been developed for dispensing flat sheet articles, such as lottery tickets and telephone calling cards, in retail stores. Traditionally, such articles are presented to customers in a generally flat display case positioned on a check-out counter of the retail store.
Tickets are often displayed in clear plastic box. The tickets are generally pulled from the box manually and counted by the retail store operator.
This system is time consuming for the employee, and there is a lack of control, in that employee can miscount the tickets and lose revenue.
Automated dispensers are also known. In order to function reliably in a retail store environment.
Such automated dispensing systems currently on the market are costly to purchase and costly and time consuming to repair, and bulky and difficult to install.
Accordingly, there is a need for a manually operable dispensing apparatus for reliably dispensing flat sheet articles, such as lottery tickets and calling cards. There is a further need for a dispensing apparatus that can be simply serviced and maintained to both reduce the amount of skill and training required store personell. Such a manual dispenser will also provide reliable inventory control. Moreover, there is a need for a dispensing apparatus that can be utilized to limit the likelihood of theft and to facilitate the monitoring of the inventory of flat sheet articles dispensed to customers.